acetabular labral tear

Ripanco said:

Hi All, Just found out I have torn the cartilage called the labrum in my left hip, diagnosed
finally by MRI. ... It appears that hip arthoroscopy to repair the cartilage and clean out debri
is the only option. I am scared to death that this is going to mean I won't be able to run again.
Has anyone had this procedure and been able to return to at least serious if not competitive
running? Andrea

Dear Andrea,

No one has written back to you with their experience, and likely no one will, because your
injury is so unusual. There's only one person who can really tell you how it goes for lots of
people who have this injury and how they recover -- your orthopedic surgeon -- who, hopefully,
has taken care of such folks regularly and knows their experience. If you'd like further
reassurance, ask your orthopedist for a referral to another orthopedist for a second opinion.
Anyone contemplating surgery with apprehension about it (that would be just about every sane
person!), is entitled to as much reassurance as possible so you can undergo this necessary
procedure with confidence and optimism. Doctors don't get offended at requests for 2nd opinions
because they appreciate this need for reassurance. I wish you best of luck and success.

-- Josh Steinberg MD, Syracuse

Quoted message said:

No one has written back to you with their experience, and likely no one will, because your injury
is so unusual.

Hi Josh, Thank you for your response! I was starting to get a complex since I don't post here often
and was afraid no one wanted to talk to me!!🙂 I did not realize that this was so unusual an injury.
To ad injury to injury, they also found a large synovial cyst on my L4-5 spine! Talk about your body
letting you down! I am now afraid that may prove to be the more difficult condition to treat. Not
encouraging to say the least and the last several days have been hard. I do see a new Sports
Medicine MD,DO tomorrow. Thanks for the well wishes too.

Andrea in VT

Ripanco said:

Quoted message said:

No one has written back to you with their experience, and likely no one will, because your injury
is so unusual.

Hi Josh, Thank you for your response! I was starting to get a complex since I don't post here
often and was afraid no one wanted to talk to me!!🙂 I did not realize that this was so unusual
an injury.

FWIW, I couldn't find any references in pponline or sports injury bulletin and they usually have
many sports injuries. However, I did find a couple refernces through google that you may or may not
have seen:

physioroom.cominterview richard villar.phpOpen ↗

Two quotes within there: "One obviously has to be very careful about arthroscoping a premier
sportsmen as there is a clear morbidity following hip arthroscopy, of the order of 5%. It is not a
technique for the occasional operator for this reason!"

"At the three month point, assuming all is well, I take the plunge and allow the patient back to
unprotected, full activities."

ncbi.nlm.nih.govquery.fcgiOpen ↗
ct "Three of them underwent arthroscopic debridement of their acetabular labrum tears and returned
to their sporting activities within 8 months" [doesn't say what happened to the other 15 athletes]

At least in some cases, people do resume full activity.

You might try googling on a combination of the terms: acetabular labrum tear. This pulled up the
above info plus a bunch of others that I didn't pursue.

Good luck.

Dot

--
"Success is different things to different people" -Bernd Heinrich in Racing the Antelope